


Stars in her eyes

by scuttlesworth



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 22:10:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scuttlesworth/pseuds/scuttlesworth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper meets Tony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars in her eyes

There's been a mistake.

It's definitely not a misunderstanding, or a mismatch, or a misfile. It's a mistake. Specifically, five hundred forty two thousand, two hundred and eleven dollars (and seventy eight cents) worth of mistake.

She stares at the numbers and blinks and thinks.

On the one hand, it could be an honest mistake. On the other, it could be... a problem.

Best to find out which before she goes shouting over the cubicle farm wall. If she wants to keep her job. And she does, very, very much. Nobody else is going to give her this nice of a medical plan anytime soon. Not that she needs it, but Potts are Practical, her mother said. You never know. Potts are Prepared. Potts are pragmatic, persnickety, and (according to her father) pale pernicious paragons of peerless pulchritude. Her mother laughed, and called her father puckish. Pithy, he responded.

She prints a copy of the spreadsheet for reference, locks her workstation, and takes a walk. Best to do this sort of thing in person. No need to spread copies of a mistake around on the e-mail servers where they become legal, disclosable documents. First stop, finance.

Jerry is an older man with a silver goatee and a creepy smile. He prints out the project requisition forms with a wink. "Just for you," he says, and she hopes he's only trying to make her feel special, because the alternative is a) he doesn't ordinarily do his job or b) he's hitting on her. And, ew. He's married.

The documents lead her to logistics, where she gets an argument about the distribution of company propriety data, and then copies of the shipping requisitions and manifests. She read the company training, and she knows what's allowed and what's not, and the fact that they were trying not to hand over the data is either excellent operations security or not excellent guilt or blind stupid ignorance of the regulations. Once again, she's not sure which it is.

Logistics leads her to the warehouse and the shipping forms. The shipping forms lead her to the secondary propulsions lab. The head of the lab, an older Native American woman with long silver hair in a braid, takes one look at Pepper's arms piled high with paperwork, her sensible skirt which ends exactly at the crease of the knee, her low heels, and her scowl - and laughs. She doesn't stop laughing as she leads Pepper to an elevator, cards her in, and presses a button for the basement. She's still snickering while the elevator doors close in Pepper's face, and Pepper is descending to the basement wondering: What's the joke?

Ten minutes later, she gets it.

 

The first thing Pepper Potts ever sees of Tony Stark is his ass. It's a nice ass. Frankly, a sinfully gorgeous ass. It's also quite obvious. You can't not notice it; it's not a subtle ass. Clad in jeans, his entire torso engulfed in a massive wire-wrapped ring, talking to himself while he tries to weld something - she can be forgiven for not realizing that the very fine ass belonged to the head of the company.

But she's got a job. She peels her eyes off the ass and refocusses on the ring (engineering work is baffling and so safe) and clears her throat. Then she frowns and looks closer at the wiring wrapping the ring.

"Helen, you're gorgeous but you're far too old, you shouldn't be oggling my ass. Unless you're Barry, if you're Barry you're young enough, you can oggle but you don't get to touch - oh. Hello. You're not Helen or Barry." He's slid himself out of the ring and stood there, welding torch in one hand, sweat sticking his white wife beater to his chest, dark hair standing on end. He pushes up his welding goggles and eyes her. "Definitely not. Far too beautiful for Barry."

Pepper walks over to the wire and tugs on it with her bare fingers. Then she turns and gives the welder her most practiced You Are Neck-Deep In Sharks Now Buddy smile, and the welder's eyes widen. "This is an amazing project," she gushes, teeth bared. The welder looks cautiously pleased, trying to reconcile what his lizard brain is telling him is big trouble with her delighted tone of voice. "Amazing. Look at all this! I'm thinking it's Illudium Q-36, right? That we purchased - " she consults a page halfway through her stack of paperwork, and begins strolling towards him - "Ohhh, eleven kilograms of in wire form, half a millimeter diameter, at a cost of around five thousand four hundred and sixty two dollars per meter, plus shipping. For project Dust Devil. Which strangely enough, only put in a requisition paper for one meter of Illudium Q-36. Which means that the remaining ninety nine meters of very, very expensive wire are not being used for the official project, and are in fact, instead being wrapped around this -" she waves at the ring - "very large donut." She eyes the donut dubiously for a moment before turning her gaze back on the welder with a sweet smile. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to know who authorized this expenditure. Because they don't have a signature on file in the lab, or transport paperwork assigning that remaining wire to another lab, or a good explanation, and yet here you are - using it up."

He looks at her wide eyed for a long moment before pressing his lips together. "You know," he says, walking past her to the table to drop his welding gun and goggles, "you're the first person in the seven years I've been working down here to notice a discrepancy in the reports. And the first to follow it up, and the first to come down here and oh my god it was hot, you yelling at me. I thing the only thing you need now are glasses. If I asked, would you put on glasses and do it again? I want this on video. Jarvis, get the cameras ready, I want this on video." He's eyeing her and she clutches the paperwork just a little bit tighter, realizing that the lab is - besides herself and this guy - completely empty of human life. There's a robot in the corner moving something and a video screen playing and she must have thought, because there was noise and movement, that they weren't alone. But now she sees it and - she's not exactly terrified. No, fear isn't her first response at all, and Oh, Pepper. You idiot. He's hitting on you. It's Tony Stark.

They had a briefing about this in inprocessing. How to handle it if you met him, what to expect. She took notes, for heaven's sake. In her defense though - he doesn't look anything like the picture in the main lobby. Or the brochure. Or the carricuture on the stall wall of the second floor women's restroom.

Time to go, Pepper, before you get fired. Humiliation and running away are a girl's best friend. She stammers and apologizes and backs up. Elevator, elevator, right behind her, right? He's smirking and stalking her, it really is stalking the way he moves, all fluid and focused. Sweaty sex in tight pants, she thinks, and tries to make sure she doesn't accidentally blab *that* out while she blushes and - oh, damnit. The elevator is secure. She can't get out unless he lets her.

He leans very, very close to her while he swipes the card across the elevator entry reader. His hand hovers for a long moment while his lips, oh, he has nice lips, sit near her ear. "Figured it out, have you?" he murmurs before he takes pity on her. She doesn't exhale until she's three floors up.

 

 

"Sir, you know I would have sent the elevator up for you. There was no need to use your key." Jarvis sounds hurt.

He grins. "More fun this way, Jarvis," and half a second later he's back inside the ring with a foot of heat-shrink and a hot air gun.


End file.
